Building the Institutions of Peace

Swarthmore Lecture 1962

J. Duncan Wood

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367243777
• eBook ISBN: 9781000024029
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Peace & Global Development
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The pacifist principle, so cogently expressed in the Declaration to Charles II, has led succeeding generations of Quakers to consider the application of this principle to international affairs. William Penn's 'Essay towards the Present and Future Peace of Europe', which proposes international machinery for keeping the peace, is the first of a series of Quaker contributions to a body of thought which has been given some practical expression during the twentieth century. Originally published in 1962, the present lecture is not occasioned by a significant anniversary of William Penn's essay, published in 1693, but by the urgent relevance of its ideas to the current international impasse.

The lecture is based on the assumption that the tradition of Quaker political thinking which Penn initiated remains a living and vital one, to whose cultivation and renewal Friends can rightly devote a measure of their time, their energy and their concern. This requires that Friends think deeply about the nature of the present struggle for world power and the measures that can be taken to abate it; about the direction which existing international institutions should take in order to promote the present and the future peace of the world; and about the role of a religious society both within and without the realm of politics. Of necessity and intention, the lecture asks more questions than it can answer.

II

FROM PENN TO U.N.—PROFIT

IN putting forward his proposal for international co-operation, Penn was at pains to point out the “real benefits which would flow” from it. Subsequent history has justified his confidence: let us consider how the nations have been able, by agreement among themselves, to promote the “ease and security of travel” which Penn foresaw would flow from the adoption of his proposal. We are not, of course, concerned with the improvement in the material conditions of travel which has occurred since Penn visited the Continent with Fox and other English Friends in 1677, journeying by open wagon at immense discomfort and inconvenience. What does concern us is that the greater ease of modern methods of transportation has demanded an impressive degree of international co-operation unknown and unnecessary in Penn’s time.¹ Whether he were to re-visit Europe by road, by rail, or by boat on the Rhine, his journey would be facilitated by numerous international agreements and conventions, designed to standardize equipment, to simplify formalities, or to open routes to international use. A list of conventions, published in 1948, mentions 53 relating to these three modes of travel, the earliest dating from 1856; but the list neither reveals nor estimates the diplomatic labour usefully devoted to arriving at these agreements for the general benefit of mankind.

¹ Travel was so slow in Penn’s day that Europe had not yet found it necessary to agree upon a uniform calendar. Most Catholic states had adopted the New Style of Pope Gregory XIII, but many Protestant states, including Great Britain, adhered to the Old Style. In Germany the calendar was a patchwork following the religion of the ruler of each state.

If Penn were to re-visit Pennsylvania by sea, he would profit from an even larger body of international legislation, which was already in slow process of formation in his own day. The doctrine of the freedom of the seas, first formulated by Grotius in 1609, means that, if the sea belongs equally to all, the rights and duties of all thereon must be defined by common agreement. Between 1857 and 1948 sixty international conventions were drawn up concerning maritime navigation, covering a wide range of subjects from maritime signals and collisions at sea to sanitary and safety regulations, many of which are the continuing concern of the youngest of the Specialized Agencies.¹ United Nations has recently assisted in the codification of maritime law, and if two plenipotentiary conferences failed to agree on the difficult problem of the width of territorial waters, this should not blind us to their solid achievements in other, less controversial areas. Since the oceans cover more than two-thirds of the globe, it can be claimed that a much larger portion of the earth’s surface is governed by agreed international law than remains outside its jurisdiction.

The long experience in legislating for the ocean has been applied to air travel, whose international implications were obvious from its inception. These are regulated by another Specialized Agency,¹ which is responsible for the drafting of international air traffic conventions and provides a forum for the discussion of measures to promote the safety of civil aviation. The degree of safety which this mode of travel now enjoys would not be possible without the close co-operation and constant research of the World Meteorological Organization, a Specialized Agency whose area of competence is one where national barriers are meaningless and where no progress can be made without international co-operation.

¹ The International Maritime Consultative Organization (IMCO) which started work in 1959. One of the latest conventions with which IMCO is concerned seeks to prevent the pollution of the sea by oil. This will benefit fish and birds as well as mankind.

There is another, related, area in which Penn would note progress, that of communications. International conventions relating to postal services, and to telegraph, telephone and radio, have been negotiated largely under the auspices of the two relevant Specialized Agencies, the Universal Postal Union and the International Telecommunications Union. It may be claimed that these two unspectacular bodies have as great an influence over our daily life as any other UN organ, being ultimately responsible for the arrangements which bring us our foreign mail and fill our newspapers with despatches from foreign correspondents. They have done much to promote another of those “real benefits” which Penn envisaged, in that they help to “beget and increase personal friendship”.

With very few exceptions, the spheres of international co-operation mentioned above did not exist in Penn’s time and he could not have foreseen their development. Most of them result from the scientific and technological advances of the past hundred years or more, and it can be claimed with some justification that it was in the very nature of science and technology to create their own international structures. At an early stage in the development of modern methods of transport and communications further progress became impossible without international co-operation: thus, ITU dates from 1865 and UPU from 1875; though WMO was not established until 1951, it succeeded the International Meteorological Organization, set up in 1878 and itself the result of co-operation between meteorologists which had started 25 years earlier. Indeed, this form of co-operation is but the continuation of the brotherhood of science which had defied national frontiers, and even wars, during the 18th century, and was a particular manifestation of the concept of the unity of Europe. Napoleon gave considerable impetus to this concept by bringing to those parts of the Continent which he conquered common institutions, among them the decimal system of weights and measures, so that both tradition and practical considerations favoured the development of co-operation between European nations.

¹ The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), established in 1947.

Yet Napoleon had also aroused contrary tendencies by stimulating nationalism which emphasized the divisions of Europe. In spite of this background of separatism the international institutions to which reference has been made were created to meet the over-riding needs of the time. It has further to be remembered that many of the international conventions which laid the foundations of international co-operation in these spheres involved real or supposed economic sacrifices for those who ratified them. The standardization of equipment, for instance, may involve the dismantling of national installations which represent a certain capital investment.¹ It requires a long-term view of one’s economic advantage, or of one’s international responsibility, to be prepared to make such sacrifices.

Great as are the benefits which we derive from improvements internationally promoted in travel and communications, to lay stress upon these may be to miss Penn’s point: what really concerned him was the hindrance to travel and traffic presented by the numerous “stops and examinations” at frontiers. He assumed that, if the princes of Europe created among themselves a “diet, parliament or estates”, much of the nuisance of frontiers would disappear, and that Europeans would then recover the freedom of movement which they enjoyed in Roman times, without the burden of supporting the central Roman bureaucracy. In this Penn seems to have been over-optimistic. He intended the princes of Europe to retain their internal sovereignty after they became members of the European Diet, but forgot that of all the manifestations of sovereignty, the most persistent is the desire to check travellers and levy customs duties at the frontier. Other close alliances comparable to that which Penn proposed for Europe have not automatically led to the abandonment of this sovereign right. Thus the 38 sovereign states which formed the German Confederation in 1815 retained their independent tariffs and the control of their frontiers until economic pressures from their most powerful member forced them to join a customs union; the Swiss cantons, which began their education in the art of co-operation as long ago as 1291, retained their individual rights to levy customs duties until the reform of the Confederation of 1848.

¹ For example, WMO recently decided that for international . purposes temperatures should be recorded in Celsius or centigrade. The United Kingdom much preferred Fahrenheit, both from national habit and because it held that Fahrenheit is a more sensible system. It has, however, accepted the majority decision in favour of Celsius, and as from January 1st, 1961, changed all its thermometers accordingly, only retaining the use of Fahrenheit in weather forecasts to the British public.

In fact, in the sense of freedom from frontier control, the “ease and security of travel and traffic” has steadily diminished from Penn’s time until our own. If the number of European frontiers has been greatly reduced by the unification of Germany and Italy, their significance has, over most of this period, enormously increased as a result of the greater power invested in the State and the much greater efficiency with which this power is wielded. This has not merely restricted the ease of travel and traffic, it has in many instances given the State power over life and death by enabling it to refuse asylum to political refugees, an inhuman exercise of sovereign rights which has reached its peak in the present century. Only in the last few years has a sudden and dramatic retreat from this position been witnessed in Western Europe, but not yet, alas, in Eastern Europe. The abolition of visas, and in some cases of passports, has been followed by a progressive lowering of tariff walls and by the first steps towards a Common Market whose creation would have appeared to most people only 30 years ago to be not merely impossible, but actually undesirable.

It will be objected that the creation of the Common Market is no more than a natural consequence of a development which requires larger economic units, just as, at an earlier stage in the industrial revolution, the German Zollverein and the abolition of cantonal tolls in Switzerland were natural and inevitable. But these changes do not simply happen of themselves. Some human volition is required. The Common Market was originally the concept of a few highly placed ministers. The experts who were asked to draft the Treaty of Rome at first reported that the operation was impossible, and only changed their minds when informed from above that, impossible or no, it had to be done. But human volition at the top is not enough: the ultimate success of such an experiment depends on its ability to mitigate the sacrifices demanded from its weaker members and to create a favourable climate of public opinion towards all its consequences, whether they be beneficial or painful. One of the consequences of the Common Market may well be a return to the “fluidity” of the labour market which still existed 100 years or more ago, but has gradually been checked by the rise of exclusive national states. It remains to be seen whether the members of the Common Market will readily accept workers from their less prosperous neighbours or whether, as a result of the nationalist indoctrination of the past few generations, they will treat them with a scorn which Penn would have found both repugnant and incomprehensible. We cannot expect to enjoy the economic advantages of new conditions without changing our patterns of thought—and even relinquishing cherished traditions—in order to keep pace with them—a lesson which, it seems, has still to be learned in Great Britain.

Remarkable though this revolution in European sentiment is, it has the disadvantage of being limited in scope to only a part of one continent, and of being designed, to some extent, as a defensive measure against pressure from outside—-just as Penn thought of his own plan as a defence against possible renewal of invasion by the Turks. It is too soon to say whether its defensive aspect will make the new Europe selfseeking and exclusive or whether its co-operative aspect will enable it to contribute to world peace. Neither result is inevitably bound up with the existing constitution; all will depend on the leadership that is forthcoming from the nations which make it up.

However, neither the European Common Market, nor other regional economic unions now under consideration, tell the whole story of the new trend in promoting ease and security of traffic. Though we have failed so far to establish the International Trade Organization, we do possess a body of limited membership but world-wide scope for the discussion of commercial questions, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Surprising though this institution would be to Penn, in whose days the control of trade was regarded as one of the most important weapons in the armoury of sovereign states, he would recognize in it many of the features which he proposed for the maintenance of peace in the political field. It is in essence a parliament of states, committed to the promotion of international trade by the reduction of customs barriers and the maintenance of fair practices, a parliament in which each of the contracting parties can state his problems, request or offer concessions, and adjust his differences with his fellow members by a process of patient and prolonged negotiation. It further resembles Penn’s Diet in having a very small secretariat whose duty is to facilitate the work which is performed by the member governments themselves. The GATT has the disadvantage that it is far from universal and cannot easily include among its contracting parties states which do not conduct their foreign commerce in accordance with the established practices of a free enterprise system; but it has the immense advantage of putting an end to the tariff wars which, as recently as 1939, were among the important contributory causes of armed hostilities. This agreement has worked well in conditions of expanding trade; it remains to be seen how well its principles will be maintained against the pressures of a prolonged recession.

I have dwelt at length on the benefits to travel and traffic which Penn expected to flow from his proposal, because these are the fruits of international co-operation which we all enjoy, even in a prosperous country like Britain where it can be too easily assumed that United Nations and its Agencies are irrelevant and costly luxuries. The numerous other benefits which Penn foretold and which the world is now beginning to enjoy must be dealt with more briefly. They are to be found in almost every sphere, economic, humanitarian, social and political, and in very many cases are promoted by institutions specially created for the purpose.

Several examples of international co-operation in economic questions have already been given, but there remains a vast and important field of international endeavour, the promotion of the economic development of newly independent countries. For this purpose we have created the Bank,¹ the Food and Agriculture Organization and others, and have elaborated programmes of Technical Assistance through which the skills which modern science has developed, mostly in the industrialized countries, can be of service to poorer nations struggling against ignorance, hunger and disease. Contributions to these programmes do not come exclusively from the rich: few nations are, in fact, so poor that they cannot contribute to this programme some skill or competence in return for what they receive, so that it is an inspiring exercise in human co-operation and one of the outstanding achievements of the twentieth century.

¹ The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, established in 1945.

In the field of humanitarian endeavour our international effort began with the establishment nearly 100 years ago of the International Red Cross, an instrument for maintaining the principles of humanity in the midst of the inhumanity of warfare and a channel for the expression of international charity moved by the sufferings of victims of disasters. We have also slowly established inter-governmental machinery to deal with the needs of refugees, a problem with which Penn was familiar as he witnessed the flight of the Huguenots from France. As a result of the strengthening of frontiers and of the nationalism which stands behind them, refugees in our own day have had a colder welcome than was accorded to the Huguenots, and we have been slow to recognize that national exclusiveness must be compensated by the recognition of international ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Half Title
• The Swarthmore Lectures
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Preface
• Biographical Note
• Contents
• I The Cave on Mount Horeb
• II From Penn to U.N.—Profit
• III From Penn to U.M.—Loss
• IV The Sands on which Peace has to be Built
• V East v. West v. the Rest
• VI The Dilemmas of International Co-operation
• VII The Small Voice of Prophecy
• Appendix I Extracts from William Penn’s “Essay towards the Present and Future Peace of Europe” (Chapters VII and VIII)
• Appendix II List of Abbreviations used in the Text